>Whether he cares about democracy or not is irrelevant to the fact that democracy worked in electing him.
The US election system is not democratic at all. I'm not being flippant here. The electoral college + a winner-takes-all approach is a very odd, unique system that quite literally silences millions of voters per state every election because of a difference in votes that can be as low as 5 figures in some cases. That's absolutely insane and not democratic. Georgia was decided by ~11,000 votes in 2020 out of ~5,000,000 votes cast. 0.23% margin. That means ~2.5mill voting republicans functionally were not represented despite showing up and voting, because every single district is awarded to the winner of the state. Now apply this to any state you want with any party. This wildly changes the calculus for elections (creating flyover states) and voter turnout. Yes there can only be one winner, but in this system it's very hard to say "every vote counts" when candidates can win the popular vote by 2-3% and still lose.
This is why we are once again watching the country rip itself apart over redistricting. We are literally choosing who gets to be represented and who doesn't in a very literal, granular sense.
alt Hacker News
>Whether he cares about democracy or not is irrelevant to the fact that democracy worked in electing him.
The US election system is not democratic at all. I'm not being flippant here. The electoral college + a winner-takes-all approach is a very odd, unique system that quite literally silences millions of voters per state every election because of a difference in votes that can be as low as 5 figures in some cases. That's absolutely insane and not democratic. Georgia was decided by ~11,000 votes in 2020 out of ~5,000,000 votes cast. 0.23% margin. That means ~2.5mill voting republicans functionally were not represented despite showing up and voting, because every single district is awarded to the winner of the state. Now apply this to any state you want with any party. This wildly changes the calculus for elections (creating flyover states) and voter turnout. Yes there can only be one winner, but in this system it's very hard to say "every vote counts" when candidates can win the popular vote by 2-3% and still lose.
This is why we are once again watching the country rip itself apart over redistricting. We are literally choosing who gets to be represented and who doesn't in a very literal, granular sense.